mccain's presidential campaign when john mccain ran the first time. this is stunning. but i agree with you. i mean generally on something like this what will happen, the white house will come back and stoutly defend the guy and say they're being unfair to him, and they started -- they didn't say it on the record but they started leaking all these reports they were disappointed and all that. to me that's almost -- fellows if you've got a hard vote coming up here, we understand. >> how serious is the damage and does it derail the nomination? >> well, either it does or the white house is absolutely certain of every democratic vote in the senate. >> right. >> if it is, there are more democrats there than the republicans and they think he'll get confirmed by a narrow margin. but i find this like you, norah. i've never heard or seen the white house react quite the way they did to this. >> but everyone expected hagel would get a tough grill because of past comments he made about the iraq surge, questions he made about iran and questions he made about the quo